BC

Former premier Christy Clark is refuting comments she made in a years-old radio segment about voting reform in B.C.

Clark says she's not in favour of proportional representation despite speaking in favour of a single transferable vote during a 2009 monologue on Vancouver's CKNW radio.

The recording has resurfaced as voters prepare for a referendum on voting reform next month.

In the piece, Clark said B.C. should ditch its first-past-the post voting system. The broadcast appears to contradict the BC Liberals’ stance against proportional representation, but Clark denied the interpretation over the weekend.

The segment was broadcast five years after she quit as an MLA, but three years before she returned to politics.

“Our current system served my personal political interests as a politician very well, thank you very much,” Clark said in 2009. “But since I’ve been out of politics, my views have changed.”

It was taped as British Columbians prepared to vote in a single transferable vote referendum that year. Voters rejected the change, as they did in a prior referendum under then-premier Gordon Campbell.

“I see many people whose interests, and in many cases whose income, is dependent on keeping our system the way it is,” Clark said. “They are scared because (STV) will change things. It will force politicians to compete for all of your votes.”

A mail-in referendum will be held again Oct. 30-Nov.30, asking voters to consider three options for proportional representation.

“I have never supported (proportional representation) and, in the absence of a proposal on the ballot that improves political accountability rather than diminishes it, I will be voting to support our current system,” Clark said on Saturday.